


Objective And Trajectory

by holyfant



Series: Objective & Trajectory [1]
Category: In the Flesh (TV)
Genre: Gen, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Post-Series, Recovery, References to Suicide, Relationship Problems
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-28
Updated: 2015-01-28
Packaged: 2018-03-09 11:05:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3247337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/holyfant/pseuds/holyfant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What, then, after the clock is smashed?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Objective And Trajectory

**Author's Note:**

> All my love to pasiphile for the beta <3

 

He doesn't dream of Amy the night after her funeral, but instead of his dad; the neurotriptyline-stimulated connections that form during sleep just like they do in the living quietly bridge the small gap in time when he wasn't – _him_ , and it becomes part of his memory like everything else.

 

“Son,” his dad says in the dream, sprayed with black mucus and blood, “Kieren,” but there is nothing left inside Kieren’s mind that can hear, all he can do is _eat_ , and chomp, and chew, because the _hunger_ is – it's –

 

He wakes up with his pillow in his mouth, his nails scrabbling at the mattress. He doesn't cry, because he can't, but he dry heaves over the edge of his bed, cramps overtaking him, his empty body trying to expel what it didn't ingest.

 

*

 

“Straighten your shoulders, love,” his mum says in the morning, and she stands behind his chair and fixes his collar with fingers that he doesn't feel, not really, not anymore. She rests her hands for a second on his shoulders, like she used to.

 

“I don't get back aches anymore,” he says, and ducks his head further.

 

His dad sends him a mildly disapproving glance from across the breakfast table. He had said he believed that the Blue Oblivion had been forced on Kieren, but still there is a wariness in his eyes that reminds Kieren of his first days home from the treatment centre.

 

What he can feel, still: something of pressure, but scattered; weak flickers of warmth that his redeemed, broken nerves still detect. Mum takes her hands away from his shoulders after a moment; that, he feels.

 

*

 

“She didn't _go_ gently, though, did she?” Kieren asks Simon, toeing his socked feet at the end of Simon's bed. He feels... numb. This, in turn, sparks an edge of fear. At the treatment centre, people were always going on about how apathy was the antithesis of humanity; he remembers how upsetting it was that they should tell him that it was _good_ that he was afraid, that it was _good_ that at night he'd surface from increasingly vivid nightmares that made him hate every fibre of himself. The thought that numbness was something to be wary of has imprinted on him somehow, and now it makes him think back to this morning. For a moment he tries to reassure himself that the memory he has of his dad lining up his shot was, in fact, today's.

 

“Hm?”

 

“Amy's first epitaph.”

 

Simon looks up from the book he's reading at his desk. There is no question on his face, which makes Kieren want to kiss him. The way Simon waits; it's beautiful.

 

“Do not go gently into – the night, I think,” Kieren says, quoting from memory, the whine of anxiety in his stomach abating a little under Simon's patient look. “And raging about the fading of the light, something. She didn't... I just wish she could have...”

 

Simon waits for him to finish. “It was a misquote,” he finally says, when Kieren doesn’t continue. “She'd deleted a line because it didn't apply to her. I liked that.”

 

Kieren raises his eyebrows. “You, Mr preacher, approving of a misquote? Must be the end of the world.”

 

This time, there is the flicker of humour in Simon's pale eyes. “Excuse me, I approve of many kinds of defacings and subversive readings. You should see my bible.”

 

Kieren raises an eyebrow. “You have a bible?”

 

“'Course I do. I was a _very_ good and obedient young Irishman before I died.”

 

“Oh, right, yeah, sure you were. Good and law-abiding young man, who then rose again to become a leader of the movement for the uplifting and revaluing of the undead. Sure your mum's very proud.”

 

Kieren smiles to show his intent, but Simon, instead of being drawn into their morbid bickering as usual, blinks twice and goes tense, his jaw tightening noticeably.

 

“Hey,” Kieren says, “are you okay?”

 

Simon nods, and forces his mouth into a brief smile that isn't really one. He's quiet for a long moment and looks at the wall next to Kieren, apparently dealing with some dark thought or memory passing through him; it's something that Kieren has never seen him do this openly, and he observes it with something of trepidation. Clearly he's said something wrong, but he doesn't know Simon well enough to have any clue what it is or what to do about it.

 

“Simon?”

 

“It's _Do not go gentle into that good night_ ,” Simon says then, just a little too briskly, “not _gently_.” He looks at Kieren, and his face is devoid of any meaningful expression.

 

Kieren settles himself up on his elbows, frowning. “So?”

 

“So...” Simon gets up from his desk chair and after a moment of hesitation, steps over to the bed. Kieren, catching on, scoots over a little to give him space, and then rolls onto his side so he can look at Simon as he lowers himself onto the bed, with the careful movements of – of who they are, aware that they are never completely in control of their limbs. “So we have to consider the idea that the line isn't talking about the _going_ being _gentle_ , but the person who's leaving _going gentle_.”

 

“Oh, do we have to consider that?” Kieren says, smiling in relief at the return of Simon's familiar analytical seriousness, and then smiling a bit more because he realises that Simon has actually managed to make him smile.

 

“Yes,” Simon says solemnly. “I believe we must.”

 

“Well,” Kieren says. He carefully puts his hand on Simon's arm, and waits for the diluted data of the touch to register in his fingers, little blunted pops of sensation that fizzle briefly, then die. “Then we must.”

 

*

 

Later, dithering for a while longer in the bungalow's hallway, Simon scratches his fingertips through Kieren's hair, which always sets off a series of confused, shuddering prickles of feeling in Kieren's scalp. Kieren bites back a sound of response, eyes fluttering shut.

 

“Bye,” Simon says, and adds quickly, “Come back soon,” and to cover it up a little he smiles.

 

“I'm sorry if I,” Kieren begins, but Simon angles Kieren's face up and kisses him. When he draws back, his expression is very serious and very intense, and to deflect the weight of that – the scary, delicious weight – Kieren ducks past him, out the door and onto the rain-slick street.

 

“Kieren,” Simon says behind his back, in _that_ way, so Kieren simply throws him a smile over his shoulder and walks away.

 

*

 

The feeling of being followed is with him often, these days, and if he thinks back across the dark nightmareish stretch of time when he was – untreated, he remembers that he sometimes had it even when alive. He'd asked Rick about it, once, and Rick had frowned, “What, d'you think I’ve nothing better to do than follow you around, Ren?”, and then he'd laughed, open and happy, and twisted the cap off the bottle of White Lightning.

 

It doesn't help that Simon often sends him off with “be careful”. Now it's a hunched-back-walk-fast kind of feeling, telling himself it's something ingrained from – from his time being bullied in school, from his time avoiding Bill Macy both before his death and after, from his time frantically checking whether his cover-up hadn't rubbed off on his collar.

 

Home makes his eyes prick; mum's cooking chips, there's grease smoke in the air that flickers in the lamp light. He hasn't worn his contacts for a while, and yet, there is the vague feeling of sleeplessness in his lids, a pulling soreness.

 

“Where have you been then, eh?” dad says from behind the newspaper. Automatically, Kieren reads the headline. _US DEBATE OVER PDS ADDITIONS TO OBAMACARE_

 

“Amy's,” he says without thinking, then blinks and corrects himself to: “Simon's.”

 

Dad grunts; it could be approval or disapproval. Kieren assumes the former and wanders into the kitchen.

 

*

 

In the middle of the night, he is jolted out of viscous, slimy dreams by someone standing over his bed, touching his face. Immediately something surfaces in him – people in white, shining a torch into his eyes, the feeling of drifting upwards –

 

“For fuck's sake!” he cries out, arms shooting out from under the covers without him consciously willing them to. “Jesus Christ, Jem! You nearly gave me a heart attack!”

 

Jem half-laughs, half-gasps, a startled little hiccup. She's holding a bottle of cider in one hand. “Sorry, Kier, I thought y'were asleep.”

 

“Yeah, I was,” he hisses, and sits up, gathering his limbs closer to him, uncomfortable with the way they sometimes get away from him.

 

“A heart attack, huh,” she echoes him, and he can hear the smile in her voice, and picture its bitterness on her face. He can't think of anything to say, so he doesn't react. “Hey, I'm sorry,” she says then, quieter now, and sits down on his bed, near his feet. “You okay?”

 

“Yeah,” he says, the rote response of habit. He blinks, then, at himself, but it's too late to take it back. Jem is pale in the moonlight, her dark fringe falling forward over her eyes. She almost doesn't look real.

 

“Philip Wilson's gutted,” she says after a moment. “Don't think I've ever seen him show that much feeling in one evening.”

 

“Hm.” Kieren wraps his traitorous arms around his knees to stop them from trembling. There's been a little tremor in him for a few days – his burnt-out nerves chasing themselves around his body, he reckons, half-crumbled connections that randomly fire and die out. “Dunno what they were getting up to, but clearly something was going on. It's...” He lets out a silent, airless sigh. Jem is safe to talk to, especially like this, in the dark. “I hadn't really talked to her much the past week. Last thing I said to her was that – that we'd have to talk later. So much was happening, and I just didn't have... the time. Didn't think I _needed_ the time.”

 

“'m sorry.” She reaches over and squeezes his knee through his blanket. Little sister. Big sister. She's breathing, he can hear her in the dark. He thinks, not for the first time, about what it will be like to see her age.

 

“Are _you_ all right?” he switches the conversation around, because she wouldn't have come to his room if there wasn't something she needed from him.

 

“Myeah,” she says.

 

“Have you – I mean –”

 

She tsks, annoyed. “ _No_ , Kier, I don't _want_ to talk to him again.”

 

“It's all right if you do,” he says, to give her her space, though something in him goes tight and crouching at the idea.

 

“Stop talking bollocks,” she says, sharply. “He didn't just do what he did to _you_ , Kier, but he almost made _me_ the one who had to, to –”

 

He lets her falter. This isn't something they usually talk about; how there is, _has been_ , a possible circumstance in which they stand across from each other and want to, have to, need to kill each other. It's happened twice now. Kieren shivers a little; a response from emotion that his body remembers.

 

“It wasn't your fault,” he says awkwardly, and that's true for both instances.

 

“Well, it weren't yours either,” she says, and she sounds a little angry.

 

They sit together. Jem's hand is still on his knee; he can see it in the gloom, even if he can't feel it.

 

“Will you be okay tomorrow?” he asks her.

 

She sniffs. “Sure. Thanks for asking Dr. Russo.”

 

“'s okay. He sets up people with therapists all the time. Dr. Mortimer's supposed to be an expert on trauma and stuff.” Kieren smiles a little. “Russo thought I was asking for myself, at first.”

 

Jem breathes a laugh. “Probably not a bad idea either.”

 

Kieren thinks back to therapy in the treatment centre, when everything was still out of focus and blurry, except for the panic at night and the guilt during the day. The psychiatrists with tasers, the nurses afraid behind their smiles. And before _that_ , the school nurse asking him too-pointed questions about his arms, her concern clotted and thick.

 

“All right,” Jem says, “I'm off to bed.”

 

“Yeah,” Kieren mumbles. “Night.”

 

*

 

He hasn't told Jem or his parents that Simon asked him to leave after Amy's funeral – they're distrustful of him as it is, and no matter how unsure Kieren himself still is of everything, it seems unfair to subject Simon to their sometimes overblown protectiveness. He has to... figure this out for himself. He has to figure out what it means that Simon told Zoe and Brian and the others to stay away from the bungalow, and that he has then turned towards Kieren with a zeal and a devotion that’s exhilarating and frightening at the same time. It's nothing like – it's nothing like _Rick_ , who could only be with Kieren in one place, and only in a certain way, according to the rules he'd made up that made it okay. (They could only touch in the cave, never outside of it; Rick would kiss Kieren but pull back whenever Kieren initiated; their few instances of tipsy mutual masturbation were rushed and never, ever talked about.)

 

Simon looks at Kieren as though he's trying to find a new leader. Simon looks at Kieren as though he will _follow_ him, wherever. It's new and exciting, being received with such warmth and enthusiasm, and treated with such reverence. It was always him who had to ask, before – and now he doesn't have to ask, Simon will give, give, and take whatever Kieren gives in return, cherish each glance and touch...

 

Sometimes Simon says his name, serious as the grave, and makes it sound like he's going to confession. Kieren doesn't know what to do with it; he's not a prophet, he hasn't got salvation for anyone. He runs, often – when Simon looks _straight_ at him for a long time, or when Simon says his name into his ear like that. He drops those looks, or he pulls back from the hugs. He doesn't know what would be waiting for him if he stayed, and it scares him sometimes.

 

He hasn't told Jem or his parents that Simon says “be careful” every time Kieren gives him the chance, or that he often feels like someone is following him around.

 

*

 

By accident, he meets Philip at Amy's graveside, two weeks after her funeral. They exchange looks; Philip's mouth does a curious thing that is a mixture between a purse and smile. Kieren jams his hands deeper into the pockets of his hoodie, trying not to be irritated by Philip's presence. He'd wanted to talk to Amy, spend some time with her in the quiet. Now he feels watched, on edge.

 

The grave still looks raw, like a wound; though the dirt has settled, it still looks unfinished, as though someone has been rooting through it recently. Kieren almost laughs at the thought and only manages to stifle the impulse at the last minute.

 

“She was changing.”

 

Kieren turns, blinks at him. “Sorry?”

 

“Amy,” Philip says. “Before she –” His breath is almost comically loud as he draws it in, a shuddering, human thing. He rubs a hand over his eyes. Kieren looks away from him, suddenly embarrassed to see him like this, so exposed, so – hypocritical. “She thought she was going rabid, but she wasn't, she was just – changing.”

 

“Philip,” Kieren begins.

 

“You saw! You saw the blood, you did!”

 

Kieren blinks. He _had_. “It's – the medicine, Philip, it stimulates our bodies to produce... stuff, and we don't... people don't know yet how it works and what it does in the long run, so it's just... it's guesswork, and for Amy it must have done – _that._ I don't know.”

 

“She wasn't supposed to die,” Philip says. Kieren glances over at him and is surprised, for a moment, by how shattered he looks. “It shouldn't have been possible to kill her.”

 

“It shouldn't be possible to kill anyone,” he says, but immediately he regrets it, because this is _Amy_ , and no, it shouldn't have been possible.

 

“I didn't think that I _could_ lose her like this,” Philip says. His voice is rough with tears. “Makes it... worse.”

 

Kieren's shoulders drop. His teeth feel wrong in his mouth, too big, too present – a new sensation for the list of sensations in a dead body re-finding its limits. He doesn't know what to say, because it's so spot on, what Philip says. It's exactly what Amy had thought she'd transcended when she'd told Kieren that they could smash the clock, and it's true that losing her just as Kieren was starting to believe that made everything far more painful.

 

“Dunnit?” Philip asks, and there is something pressing and desperate in his tone. Kieren can feel his eyes on him.

 

“Yeah, I s'pose,” he says, strangled, then turns around and walks away.

 

*

 

When he comes down to breakfast, instead of a plate (the absence of which he's grateful for) there is a letter from Lancaster Academy for the Visual and Performing Arts waiting for him on the table.

 

He picks it up, runs a finger over its edges. When he looks up, his entire family is looking at him.

 

“It's an application form,” his dad says. “Auditions for next term start in a few weeks, and your mum and I –”

 

“Thought you'd make my decisions for me?”

 

Jem sends him a minuscule smile as she butters her toast. His dad puts down his knife.

 

“Give you a _nudge_ ,” he says, emphatically.

 

“You've always wanted to go there, love,” his mum says. “And you got in once, remember?”

 

He remembers, yes. It was a dream, when he was 17, flexing his skill. It was something to talk to Rick about: _I'll go to the Academy, and you can come to training in Lancaster, and –_ and the “and” was never fully spelled out, but Rick loved his drawings, let Kieren doodle him at school and in the cave, and often told him he would make it to Lancaster. It was a future they embellished between them, something precious and escapist. Something that suddenly had had no value anymore after Rick's death. Kieren looks down at the application form now, and only feels the vague buzz of fear.

 

“Look, I can't draw anymore,” he says. “Not the way I used to. My hands, they. They don't work that way anymore.”

 

Jem's toast crunches loudly when she bites into it.

 

“But you've been drawing! And painting! You made that portrait of Simon, didn't you?” his mum says, and the way she almost makes it sound like an accusation makes Kieren wince.

 

“Yeah,” he says, “I did, but –” But it took him the better part of a month to complete, his fingers staying stiff and numb, the brushes feeling alien and going ways they never would have, before. At the end of it, he didn't feel like he'd captured anything of Simon at all.

 

“And you did those, the flowers, for Amy.”

 

Kieren closes his eyes.

 

“They were beautiful, they were.”

 

“Mum, that's not –”

 

“I'm just saying! It's not _gone_ , is it?”

 

“Kier, if it's – they're PDS friendly, it says so on their website.” Dad, earnest. “Might be nice to go to a bigger city, yeah? I know it's not _Paris_ , but maybe it can still do the trick.”

 

Kieren is quiet for a long moment. Jem catches his eye and raises her eyebrows a little; she's on their side, which makes Kieren feel just a little bit worse.

 

“We just think you need a _project_ , love.”

 

“Working at the pub's all good and well, but you're not happy, son. We just thought that this, maybe...” His dad nudges the letter with his fork.

 

“I quit.”

 

“Hm?”

 

“I quit at the pub.”

 

A beat of silence. “Well, then, all the more reason,” says his dad.

 

Kieren looks up. His parents and sister look back at him and they are full of good intention, full of love. They don't feel, unlike him, out of control of their bodies, and they don't have to think, unlike him, about how to fill a life that isn't one, and that isn't measured in time.

 

“I'll think about it,” he says.

 

*

 

He doesn't have a pulse to beat against the touch of Simon's hand, which... changes things.

 

“Don't you think this is a bit...” Simon experimentally fits his palm against Kieren's throat and slowly fans his fingertips; the pressure registers unevenly. “...pointless?” Kieren finishes.

 

“Do you?” Simon asks, looking up from Kieren's chest. “Aren’t you enjoying it?”

 

“I didn't say that,” Kieren says, because the response of his nerve endings is – interesting, at least; there is a frisson of feeling where Simon slides his fingers over his skin, confused and jumbled but more sustained than any other touch he's felt since rising.

 

“What's usually the point, anyway?” Simon asks.

 

Kieren laughs briefly. “I dunno, Simon, but I can think of at least one thing –”

 

Simon rolls his eyes, which is so out of character on him that it makes Kieren laugh again. “God, the _almighty_ orgasm,” he says. “Yeah, if that was the point, then I suppose this...” He sobers and deflates. He takes his hand away, which does, curiously, register as a loss for Kieren. “If you want to stop, that's fine.”

 

Kieren looks up at him, and the intensely focused look that Simon gives him sparks another shiver of response. He can't – _feel_ it, not really, but he knows that if it were different that look would immediately make his blood pool in his groin, and just the thought of it does – well, something. “Hey, no,” he says. “I didn't say I wanted to stop.”

 

“But you're bored.”

 

“Nnnno,” Kieren says, but then struggles with finding the words to say what he _is_. It was easy with Rick, he supposes – that didn't need a conversation, Rick didn't _want_ a conversation, it was just finding the edge and trying to get there as quickly as possible, frantic and afraid of what would happen after. There is no such hurried lust left in his body now.

 

Simon, sat next to him on the bed, waits for him to formulate a sentence, patient as always.

 

“I'm not sure how to do this,” Kieren finally says. “I don't have – a lot of experience to fall back on.”

 

“Hm. My experiences before aren't any help to me, either, if that's what you think.”

 

“What, then?”

 

Simon considers. “Nothing, really. It's something new.”

 

“Oh.”

 

“Sorry,” Simon says, and changes his position so he's lying down next to Kieren, head resting on a hand. “Probably not much help.”

 

They lie side by side for a long moment. “A shared goal could help,” Kieren ventures, and chances a glance at Simon.

 

Simon's got that face on, the one that Kieren didn't like when he was surrounded by the other ULA'ers, but that he appreciates a bit more now that it's directed only at him. It's an intense, thoughtful face. Simon reaches out and puts his hand onto Kieren's body again; this time, he touches Kieren's abdomen through his t-shirt and presses down his palm there. The sensation is vague at first, but gathers a bit of clarity as Kieren focuses his attention on it – or is it because Simon leaves his hand there, motionless, waiting for the weight of it to register for Kieren's damaged nervous system?

 

“I like how it's new,” Simon says quietly. “I like how it's ours to figure out.”

 

“Hm.” Kieren, on an impulse, puts his own hand over Simon's. No sensation of warmth – they're both cold. But there is, unmistakably, the press of Simon's skin against his, against what used to be his most sensitive parts, the hands that translated the world when it was unintelligible.

 

“Maybe that can be our goal.”

 

“The goal is to find a goal?”

 

Simon, so beautiful with words, so gorgeous when in thought – smiles. “The goal is to find something shared.”

 

Kieren smiles too. He can't remember ever having felt this safe with anyone. “Yeah, all right.”

 

“Kieren,” Simon says then, softly, in _that_ way. Kieren blinks and makes eye contact with him. “There's – there's something I have to tell you.”

 

*

 

Kieren slams the bungalow's door behind him and runs the entire way home, his stiff legs nearly giving way beneath his only half-controlled movements several times. There is a hysterical whine of terror in his head, that tells him to _run_ , to get cover until everyone has forgotten about him. Sprinting, he has to dodge out of the way of Shirley Wilson's car as she backs out of a driveway; she honks and shouts something after him, but he doesn't stop to apologise.

 

When the front door clicks shut behind him, he is suddenly very aware of the fact that nothing about him is tired; he isn't panting, he isn't sweating, his muscles are giving no sign of distress. He leans back against the door for a moment. He could probably run for a whole day and it wouldn't even register for his body. There is also none of the buzz; his head isn't cleared, there is no rush of energy. It's just... nothing. It feels jarring for his body to be this calm when his entire chest is leaden with shock.

 

 _We're the improved product_ , Amy's voice says in his head. _New, improved and more-geous, Kieren Walker!_ Suddenly, intensely, he misses her so much, so deeply and painfully that he gasps a little with it, and he lets his head thud back against the door.

 

“Kier?” his mother's voice comes from the living room. “Is that you?”

 

“I – yeah,” he manages, and gives himself another long moment before he pushes himself off the door.

 

They're watching one of dad's action film blurays; Jem isn't there.

 

“You all right, love?” His mother frowns at him.

 

“I'm fine,” he says tightly. The familiar surroundings of the living room help to blunt the edge of his anxiety.

 

“You're not wearing your –”

 

“No,” he says. “My eyes were getting irritated. Dr. Russo told me I shouldn't wear them all the time.”

 

She nods, puts on a brave smile. “Course.” He's quietly relieved she doesn't comment on the lack of cover-up; he had it on when he left, but took it off in a telephone cell on his way to the bungalow, suddenly unwilling to have Simon see him with it on.

 

Dad, without looking up from the film: “How was Simon?” It's a passing gesture of goodwill that would have touched Kieren at any other time.

 

He knows that he should talk to them more. There is so much to feel guilty for already in his own memory, but now and then it dawns on him how little they have told him about what it was like after his death and before the Rising; after he made a decision he'd never said a word about before carrying it out, but before the world flipped upside down and jostled everyone's priorities. His mother only had to look at him in the treatment centre to burst into tears – because of his face, he thought then, because of the people whose brains he _ate,_ but now he's not so sure.

 

They're trying. Usually, so is he.

 

“He's fine,” he says, not up to it this time, and crosses the living room to get to the stairs.

 

In his room he lies on his bed, staring unseeingly up at the ceiling for a long time. He listens to the sounds of his parents talking quietly as they get ready for bed, the running of water, the familiar nighttime peace that settles over the house. He gets up eventually, and then fills in the application form for Lancaster Academy for the Visual and Performing Arts. His fingers shake a little but they behave, as though the prolonged contact with another person's skin has given them a renewed focus. His name, his address, a tick in the PDS Sufferer box with only a short moment of hesitation. Motivation?

 

He looks around his room, and his eyes fall onto Simon's portrait.

 

Motivation?

 

*

 

It's probably not safe – actually, he knows it's not, not after what Simon told him – but he wanders around Roarton's hillsides for the better part of Saturday, seized by a deep and violent restlessness. It's hard to feel vulnerable there; he'd be able to see people coming miles away, and it feels like he's on the edge of the world, the ground dropping away on both sides of the path he's on. If the undead prophet wants to come up here and off him – well, he almost wants him to; there is a searing feeling of combativeness in his chest, and he all but itches with the desire to _fight_ someone. Part of him nearly expects Simon to come tell him off for being up there on his own, but Kieren had told him in no uncertain terms that there would be no more following around, and Simon has apparently taken that to heart. It's confusing, how that makes Kieren feel angry and disappointed at the same time.

 

There's snow in the air; he can't smell it like he used to, but he remembers the fresh heaviness of the smell, and that's nearly the same thing. He doesn't think of Simon, or tries not to, tries to get his thoughts to skip over what passed between them the day before; first a way of touching that had done something rousing to his heart, which he didn't think he even had anymore, and then, after that –

 

There's a huddle of horses in one of the meadows. Their body heat rises like steam, and they group together against what he supposes is a fiercely cold day. Kieren wonders for a moment if the farmers kept their animals indoors during the Rising – would horse's brains have satisfied the hunger? The question makes him feel a pang of disgust at himself, but it's less heavy than usual. He wanders over to the fence. He rests his elbows on it and watches the animals for a while, the way they stamp their feet and nose at each other with their dark muzzles. Light snow starts to fall, like scraps of paper.

 

One of the horses breaks loose from the huddle and fixes Kieren with its black eyes. He stares back. The horse ambles forward a few paces, then stops again, appearing to size him up.

 

Kieren tilts his head at it, and clicks his tongue the way his father does when trying to lure horses towards him. It doesn't tend to work for his dad, but the horse's ears prick up, and it comes over to the fence in a leisurely pace.

 

“Hullo,” Kieren says, a bit surprised. “What d' _you_ want, then?”

 

The horse makes a little snorting noise. Struck by an idea, Kieren ducks down and picks a handful of the long grass that's next to the fence pole.

 

He holds it up to the horse. It makes another sound and leans in towards his hand. “You're not scared of me, are you?” he asks the horse, and smiles as its lips move over his palm, taking the grass with them with just the vaguest tickling over Kieren's skin.

 

*

 

On his way home, he comes across Jem sitting on a bench overlooking the village, her hands clasped between her thighs and her head ducked.

 

“Hey,” he says, surprised, “what are you doing here? Aren't you freezing?”

 

She looks up, and doesn't smile. “Ran into Gary.” Her breath rises in little clouds.

 

“Oh,” he says. “Shit.”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“What'd he say?”

 

She sucks in a breath and releases it, noisy. “Wanted to talk.”

 

“And did _you_ want to talk?” Kieren casts a quick look around – no one to be seen. Reassured, he sits down next to her.

 

She gives him an angry _are you kidding_ look, but he doesn't miss how she's shaking a little and how her lashes are clumped wetly together. Scooting a bit closer to her, he puts his arm around her hunched shoulders, and she makes a vague noise of surprise before leaning into it, sliding down a bit so she fits against him better.

 

“You don't owe him anything,” he says emphatically, “no matter what he says.”

 

She's quiet for a while, but he picks up on her grinding her teeth. He thinks he understands; knowing one thing but feeling another is an experience he's very familiar with. “You're cold,” she finally says.

 

“Er, yeah. Sorry.” He moves to take his arm away from her, but she grabs his wrist with a hand and keeps it in place.

 

“That's not what I wanted to say,” she says, and the next thing he knows, she's made a very small, wet sound in the back of her throat and she’s crying, quietly, against his chest.

 

“Hey, Jem,” he says softly, and squeezes her a bit closer to him. “It's all right, it's all right.”

 

She shakes his head against him, and sobs. Little sister.

 

“Yes, it _is,_ ” he says, perhaps a tad forcefully, and to soften it he says, “you're all right, you'll be all right.”

 

“Everything's – fucked,” she says wetly.

 

“We're here,” he says, “we're still here,” and that makes her cry harder; she grabs hold of his hoodie and tightens her fingers into a fist around the fabric – and then, suddenly, she wrenches herself out of his hug.

 

“We're still here,” she bites at him, “only 'cos you came back – you wouldn't have been, you never wanted to –”

 

“Jem, please,” he says, startled, “I've told you, I wouldn't do that again, it was –”

 

“Shut _up_ ,” she snaps, and covers her face with her hands, leans her elbows on her thighs and _cries_ , cries deeply and openly – the kind of crying Kieren misses, sometimes, the kind with loud ugly sobbing that chops up your breathing and that makes your entire body shake with it.

 

“Jem,” he says, a bit awed. He can't remember ever having seen her like this, not before, not after. He puts a tentative hand on her shoulder; the way it's jumping with her hurried, hyperventilating breath is so extreme he can feel the movement clearly.

 

She cries for what seems a long time; he keeps his hand on her shoulder and watches the flakes of snow melt in her hair. There is an uncomfortable knot of guilt in his gut, but it almost – feels familiar, these days, and as the minutes while away, the tension inside himself eases a little.

 

Finally, Jem quiets down, her sobs calming into the occasional hiccup. Then she straightens slowly, wiping at her eyes with her fingers. Kieren squeezes her shoulder cautiously.

 

“Okay?” he ventures after another moment.

 

She makes a humming sound that could be yes or no. Her look at him is blank, eyes red-rimmed, her expression deeply tired. “Shit,” she breathes.

 

He studies her for a moment. “Jem, did you – talk about this? To Dr. Mortimer?”

 

“Yeah.” She wipes her nose with the sleeve of her jacket. “At least, she asked about it. And it – I dunno, I thought I was... over it, but the way she was asking, it just, it brought it back a little, I s'pose.”

 

He nods.

 

“And then fucking _Gary_...” She shakes her head, sniffs loudly. “But I didn't tell her nothing, to be honest,” she says, and laughs a small bitter laugh. “I didn't want to – tell on you, or something. I dunno.”

 

Kieren bites the inside of his lip for a moment. “It's not telling on me if you need to talk about it.”

 

“Guess not,” she says flatly.

 

They sit together for a moment in silence. The thin veil of snow around them thickens in the twilight.

 

“We should get home,” he says; he doesn't say the _it's not safe_ , but either way, his sister nods and gets up without another word, silent at his side for the walk home.

 

*

 

Back home in his room, he stretches his hands out in front of him, and looks at the smudgy dark sickles in his fingernails, the spiderwebs of dry veins under his grey skin.

 

“Right,” he says, takes out a pencil and a pad, and slowly, laboriously, sketches a horse.

 

*

 

Simon calls Kieren on the eighth day after he told Kieren about the undead prophet's plans – well, he doesn't exactly call _him_ , but the land line.

 

“Oh, _hullo_ , Simon,” Kieren hears his dad say, and when he looks up from his book, alarmed, his dad raises his eyebrows at him and points at the telephone horn enthusiastically, as if Kieren were unable to work out how he's receiving messages from Simon. He winces as his dad plows on: “How are you today? … Glad to hear that. … I'm great, thanks. Say, Simon, Sue and I were thinking about Sunday lunch and we were hoping you'd…”

 

Kieren scrambles to his feet and shakes his head at his father emphatically, but he simply gets a held-up finger in return. “We know it wasn't – the last time, yeah, I'm – but if you want … all right, sure. You're welcome to come, anyway. But er, I'll take it you'll want to talk to Kieren?”

 

“ _Dad_ , no,” Kieren hisses even as his father beckons him towards the phone. Jem, curled up next to him on the sofa, gives him a confused look.

 

“Yeah, he's right here, I'll just –”

 

“Dad! For Christ's sake!”

 

His dad, oblivious, cups his hand over the horn and holds it out to Kieren. “Kier, it's Simon, can you –”

 

“Thanks a lot, dad,” Kieren groans, and, not knowing what else to do, walks over to the telephone.

 

“Don't worry, son, it won't be like last time,” his father whispers brightly, and smiles before handing the phone over.

 

Kieren takes a moment to steel himself, biting his cheek and feeling anger well up in his stomach just at the prospect of talking to Simon. “Hello,” he tells Simon flatly.

 

“Hey.”

 

 

“Was there anything you wanted to say?” Kieren asks, and it must sound quite cold, because both his father and Jem glance in his direction.

 

“Yes,” Simon says, quietly. “I've tried to call your mobile –”

 

“Yeah, I switched it off,” Kieren says stiffly, then tugs on the phone cord and moves around the corner into the staircase hallway as far as he can go, pulling the door more or less closed behind him. “It's a bit of a dick move to call me like this,” he half-whispers, “'cause I can't exactly not take your call now, can I?”

 

“Look, I'm sorry,” Simon says. “I wanted to check if you were all right –”

 

“I'm all right.”

 

“Okay, I'm glad.” A beat. “And yes, I wanted to talk to you. But if you don't want to talk, that's okay, you can hang up.”

 

Kieren considers, for a moment, to do just that – but at the same time he already knows he won't. He's not ready, not _willing_ , to give Simon so clear a signal that this is something he doesn't want. It's – fucked up, he knows, to still want to be with someone who came so close to killing him, someone who he's realised over the past few days he doesn't actually know much about except for the fact that he makes Kieren feel _incredible._ But he's been a few shades of fucked up for a long time now, and at least this time it feels like he's somewhat in control.

 

“Kieren?”

 

“No, it's okay,” he says, and feels himself calm down a little with the words.

 

“I miss you,” Simon says simply.

 

Kieren licks his lips, looks up at the ceiling of the hallway. “Yeah.”

 

“Can we talk? Properly?”

 

 _Properly_ , Kieren thinks; yes, because they didn't actually talk last time, Simon talked and Kieren left before he was even done and that was it. “Yeah, that'd be good.”

 

“Will you come over here? Tomorrow?”

 

“Yes,” Kieren says, and it feels like a decision, already. “I'll come.”

 

“Great,” Simon says, and it's like Kieren can _feel_ his relief, which is a curious experience. “Great, I'll see you then.”

 

“All right,” Kieren says, and then, suddenly seized by a desire not to have the conversation end, says without checking himself, “I miss you too.”

 

There's a moment of quiet. Then, a soft little sound from Simon – almost like a release of breath, which isn't strictly speaking possible, but that's what it sounds like. “Good,” he says. “Good.”

 

“Talk to you tomorrow,” Kieren says, squeezing the telephone horn.

 

“Bye,” Simon says, and Kieren can hear in his voice that he's smiling when he says it.

 

 _What's going on?_ Jem mouths at him when he comes back into living room, and he shrugs and puts the horn back in its place.

 

 _It's okay_ , he mouths back, and she gives him an eyebrows-raised, combative kind of look that makes him smile, because it clearly says _I'll hurt him for you if you need me to._

*

On his way to Simon's the next day, he makes a little detour and drops the application form, in a new envelope along with the four required sketches, into the post office box.

 

If he could, he'd take a good, deep breath.

 

*

 

Kieren's had time to adjust, but he sometimes still really, really misses tea. In the Walker household, there was nothing that a good cup of tea couldn't solve – or at least there wasn't until there _was_ , but it's always been a way of showing support and affection without having to actually say any of it. Comfort, and a damn good way to occupy your hands and keep your eyes focused on something other than each other.

 

Without an alternative and unsure of which emotion to give precedence to, Kieren looks at his hands for a while.

 

“Kieren,” Simon finally says, not quite in _that_ way but serious enough. Cautious.

 

“Yes,” Kieren says, and looks up at Simon in the other sofa.

 

Another moment passes, but at least they're looking at each other now. Looking at Simon there, crouched forward a little, hands clasped on his knees, so very much like he'd looked during his – seminars, makes Kieren feel a new spark of anger at the sight.

 

“So, you were gonna kill me,” he says conversationally.

 

Simon winces, and opens his mouth to respond, then closes it again. What he eventually says is: “For a moment there, yes, I was.”

 

The honesty of it makes Kieren blink. “Great,” he says. “I've got – great taste in men, I have to hand it to myself.”

 

“It was only a moment,” Simon says. “I know,” he adds quickly, apparently in response to what he sees in Kieren's expression. “That's more than bad enough, and looking back, I can't believe that moment was actually there, that it was really... that I really considered it, for a minute.”

 

“I can't believe that – drivel you told people, that that really, that nonsense –” He loses thread of his sentence and has to undo it. “I can't believe it was worth a _life_ for you. Or, _life_ , whatever, yeah –” Simon's calm face makes him angrier, and it's _Rick_ he sees for a minute, against the garage door, slumped, grey – “Yeah, it's a fucking life, Simon, it's a fucking life, you nearly took a life, my life, _my_ life,” then he stops and realises that it's really the first time it has felt like a full life since Amy died.

 

“I know. It's...” Simon shakes his head. “Unforgivable.”

 

“Would you have done it if it hadn't been me?” It's a question that rose in Kieren's mind only last night, when he'd sat, alternately fuming and terrified, thinking about how this conversation would go.

 

Simon bites his lip.

 

“Or is that, I'm sorry, is that _hard_ to answer? If it'd been some other sod that your insane prophet wanted you to off, would you have –”

 

“I don't know,” Simon says. “I don't know.”

 

“God.”

 

“Kieren,” Simon says then. In _that_ way. “My father kicked me out of his house after I got treated, because during the Rising I went home, and I – attacked my parents, and. Killed my mother. I don't... _remember_ it, but my father, he couldn't... So I had to leave. The prophet, his group – they were a family to me when I had nowhere to go, and I know it's no excuse, but.”

 

Kieren blinks, two, three times. He's forgotten to put his drops in the night before; his eyes are sore. “Wait – what?”

 

“They helped me when I had no one,” Simon says. “I just – I _believed_ him.”

 

Kieren looks at him, the words still barely sinking in.

 

“I'm sorry,” Simon adds, the words small and soft and sincere.

 

There's a silence. “Jesus, Simon,” Kieren breathes. “I didn't – I didn't _know_ , that's...”

 

“It's no excuse.”

 

Kieren's seen him deliver big sermons to his group of listeners, improvised but grand, designed to impress, to _recruit_. He seems different now, more inward-looking. Kieren has to remind himself that he doesn't really know this man, but still, regardless, he feels like this is genuine.

 

“No, it's not,” Kieren says, “but it's... something.” And hasn't he done things, too, that should be unforgivable but that have been forgiven? For which there were no excuses but that have been excused?

 

“I couldn't do it,” Simon says, and gives a funny kind of half-shrug. “I just couldn't do it.”

 

“No, but you could've – you could've let them shoot me, and it would've been done, right? Why didn't you do _that_?”

 

“I couldn't. I couldn't, Kieren.”

 

Kieren looks at him for a long moment. Simon holds his gaze. “Why not?”

 

“Because,” Simon says, and briefly he smiles, a nervous, frightened smile. “I don't want you to die, because I want you to live and I want to know you.”

Neither of them looks away. The words lie between them, not as grand and impressive as some of the other things Simon has said in this room, but quiet and real and growing in weight.

 

“Talk about mixed signals,” Kieren finally says. “First a guy plots to kill you, and then he saves your life.”

 

Simon winces. “Judge me by my last action,” he says, “not my first, for I knew not what I did.”

 

“Is that scripture?”

 

“No.” He looks serious. “It's all me.”

 

*

 

Simon doesn't kiss him; Kieren has to do that. In the hallway of the bungalow, that's where he does it; he's going home, because he knows he doesn't want to stay here, not now. He can tell by Simon's mouth and the way it's set that Simon would like him to stay, but he needs his space, now – it's definitely not over, this, but: as they stand in the hallway, face to face, nothing feels more natural than to lean in and close the space between them, wind his arms around Simon's neck, tug him down a little and kiss his mouth.

 

He can feel the way Simon tenses, then relaxes, and – wondrous – he can feel the same thing happening in Simon's lips. Surprise first, then softening. Pressing back. The sensation is far-off like it always is, but at the same time intense in a new sort of way. It's enough.

 

“See you Sunday,” Kieren says after he pulls back, smiles at Simon's briefly unchecked expression of surprise, and then opens the door and steps out onto the street.

 

“Be careful,” Simon says behind his back.

 

After a split second of hesitation, Kieren turns around, facing up to that for the first time. “Do I really need to be? Do you think he's still after me?”

 

Simon looks a tad surprised. “I don't know,” he says. “I haven't noticed or heard anything since the others left, but that doesn't mean they're not paying attention.”

 

“I'm not that person, Simon,” Kieren says, seriously. “I'm not the – first risen, whatever.”

 

Simon frowns. “What are you talking about?”

 

“I was just pulling Gary's leg, I s'pose. Making it worse than it was so he'd shut the hell up. I don't remember much of that night, but I know that – I wasn't alone, there were others already there.”

 

Simon studies him for a moment, then purses his mouth. “All right,” he says. “That's good. Maybe they've figured that out, and that's why they're not –”

 

“ _Is_ it good?” Kieren interrupts him, and there is a strange sort of pressure in his chest as he waits for the answer. He remembers Simon in the graveyard – _you're amazing_ , _I've never seen anyone fight it before_ , and the look in his eyes as he cradled Kieren's head in his hands – but will that last, now that this is out in the open?

 

“Yes,” Simon says decisively. “It's good.”

 

*

 

They – Kieren, Simon and Jem – bolt from the Walker house when Kieren's dad starts to suggest board games after lunch.

 

“Hey!” he calls after them as they hurriedly file out into the foyer. “You used to love playing Life!”

 

“Oh, Steve, _don't_ ,” Kieren can hear his mum say, before Jem clicks the front door shut behind her. Kieren locks gazes with her and they share an amused laugh. She shakes her head, still grinning, then takes a step and pulls Kieren with her by his sleeve.

 

“I thought it was nice,” Simon says, trailing after them.

 

“Yeah, well, you don't get a vote,” Jem says, but she softens it immensely by reaching back and grabbing Simon's sleeve, too. “Now that we're free,” she says, leading them forward onto the street, “where would the gents like to go?”

 

“I think I know,” Simon says.

 

*

 

Amy's temporary headstone still hasn't been replaced by a permanent one.

 

Kieren and Simon stand next to each other, sides discreetly touching, which is comforting even if Kieren can't exactly feel it. Jem is sitting down, carding her fingers through the grass next to her.

 

It's been quiet for a long time. All of them seem immersed in their own thoughts. Kieren realises he feels more all right than he has for a long time. Sad, yes – he can feel something pressing where his now-useless heart is, a rubber-band-tightening sort of sensation – and it's deep and strong but it's not _desperate_ , not something that feels like it will uproot him and catch him in a current he can't escape.

 

Simon, as though sensing some of these thoughts, leans against Kieren a little more heavily.

 

*

 

A few hours later, as he sits with his family as they eat dinner, Kieren realises quietly that he doesn’t actually trust Simon.

 

Simon is too good at performing. Kieren didn't like it when it was happening with the ULA, and he doesn't like it now – the way Simon has a very good instinct for figuring out what people need, even if they don't quite know it themselves. What he gave the people flocking to him: a sweeping narrative, a common enemy, a strong community, an objective, a trajectory. A sense of freedom that came with conditions that nobody but Kieren seemed to find alarming.

 

Simon doesn't only _have_ a bible with margins scribbled full of notes; Kieren's seen it lying around the bungalow, dog-eared and well-read – and it has something to do with that, even if Kieren doesn't really understand. It's always been bullshit to him; lies meant only to divide, to exclude. Simon's bible has passages that have been blacked out with marker, and others that have been embellished beyond legibility, but nevertheless, it clearly still means something to him.

 

Both of Simon's lives were shaped by rejection; at least _that_ , Kieren understands. It's made _him_ careful of what version of himself he puts forward, too. But there is a depth to Simon's performance that he doesn't quite know how to plunge – Simon doesn't wear any mousse, but Kieren is starting to see that that's really just another way of covering up. And now the undead prophet's narrative is lost to Simon, its direction gone awry.

 

It's not nothing, when Kieren considers all this while his mother needles a barely responsive Jem about her schoolwork, that Simon ran up to him with a knife and then took a bullet. It was a renouncing of everything that had shaped him after Rising.

 

Is _Kieren_ Simon's new narrative? It's slightly unsettling to think about, but at the same time Kieren is aware of how much he likes the way Simon looks at him – like he will _follow_ him, wherever. Maybe they have something to teach each other; maybe they both have something to learn from Simon's belief and from Kieren's doubt.

 

It's nice, it is, to realise that they have a lot of time to figure it out. It's even nicer to realise that he _wants_ to figure it out.

 

No, Kieren doesn't trust Simon, not yet, but if there's one thing he doesn't believe in anymore in this second life, it's _unforgivable_.

 

*

 

A week later, when Kieren comes downstairs for breakfast, instead of a plate, there's a letter from Lancaster Academy for the Visual and Performing Arts waiting for him.

 

“Letter for you, Kier,” his dad says from where's he's frying up eggs on the stove. “Does that mean that you sent your audition application in?”

 

“Oh,” Kieren says, “did I forget to tell you about that?”

 

“Yeah, you did,” Jem says. “Scatterbrain,” she adds, a bit too carefully for it to work as a joke, so Kieren makes sure to send her a sarcastic smile to acknowledge it.

 

“Well, open it!” his mum says.

 

Kieren holds the envelope in his hand for a moment. His useless heart is nevertheless doing a great impression of racing in his chest. “No,” he says, on a sudden impulse, “I'll think I'll take it over to Simon's and read it there, if that's okay.”

 

“'Course, love,” his mum says, just as his dad says “No!” and they frown at each other, having what seems like a wordless conversation with their expressions. Kieren focuses on Jem instead, who does the little eyebrow waggle thing they used to do when talking about boyfriends and girlfriends, before.

 

 _Dick_ , he mouths at her, and she smirks in response.

 

*

 

He walks to the bungalow, going slower than usual. It's a bright morning, cold (he supposes), quiet (he knows).

 

He crosses Philip on the street, who's walking with his hands deep in his pockets, gaze fixed on nothing.

 

“Hey,” Kieren says as they pass each other, and Philip's eyes click to his for a moment.

 

“Hey,” he mimics Kieren blankly, and walks on.

 

Kieren looks back at him over his shoulder. The winter sun is creeping over the roofs, just barely illuminating a small bit of the top of Philip's head. When Kieren looks in front of him again, the light hits his eyes, too – a bright point breaching the sky, only just climbing above the top of a house, distorting its lines.

 

Kieren stops for a moment, and looks directly at it. It doesn't hurt, like it would have, before. It doesn't hurt at all. He smiles, and tips his chin up.


End file.
